Floor-mounted household appliances, such as dishwashers or washing machines, tumble dryers or even refrigerators for example, have a receiving compartment, which can be configured in the case of a dishwasher as the wash container for washing items to be washed, in the case of a washing machine as the tub for washing laundry, in the case of a tumble dryer as the chamber for drying laundry and in the case of a refrigerator as the refrigeration compartment.
The treatment container is typically enclosed by an appliance housing, which comprises a rear housing wall and two lateral housing walls. Floor-mounted household appliances that are not intended to be built under other structures, in other words which can be freestanding, are also provided with an upper housing wall, which in the case of dishwashers is embodied as a worktop for example. The treatment container can be opened and closed for example by way of a front door that can fold down to the front, thereby allowing access to the treatment compartment enclosed by the treatment container. The treatment container is also generally provided with pull-out racks to be loaded with the items to be treated.
When such a rack is pulled out from the treatment container for loading with items to be treated, the center of gravity of the floor-mounted household appliance is displaced. This is particularly so for dishwashers with pull-out racks to be filled with items to be washed, which can displace the center of gravity so far forward when being loaded with items to be washed that there is a risk of the dishwasher tipping forward.
If floor-mounted household appliances with pull-out racks to be loaded with items to be treated are built under a worktop in the manner of built-under appliances, there are generally no problems with regard to stability. But if such floor-mounted household appliances are freestanding, special precautions have to be taken to increase stability.
In order to prevent floor-mounted household appliances with pulled out racks from tipping over, it is known to integrate special balance weights, for example solid concrete or gray iron elements (see for example DE 32 22 479 A1). It is also known to provide hollow bodies that can be filled with small-format bulk solids as shown for example in DE 297 04 969 U1 to increase the stability of dishwashers.
In industrial batch production it is necessary to transport the fully assembled floor-mounted household appliances for storage and dispatch purposes, with what are known as clamp stackers generally being used for the purpose. These are stacker vehicles, which grip the lateral housing walls of the floor-mounted household appliances in a clamping manner with tong-type grippers. Since the lateral housing walls are generally relatively thin, it is possible for them to be dented by the clamping grip. Special precautions therefore have to be taken to prevent plastic deformation of the lateral housing walls.
For example flat force absorbers are known for this purpose from DE 44 46 961 C2, serving to absorb and distribute the mechanical forces occurring with the clamping grip at the lateral housing walls. The flat force absorbers are positioned respectively at the corners of the treatment container between a housing frame and the housing cover or between the treatment container and the housing frame. They distribute the forces occurring with the clamping grip to a larger working surface, feed them into the housing frame and thereby prevent plastic deformation of the housing walls.
Until now separate facilities have been provided respectively in such floor-mounted household appliances to prevent damage to the appliance housing during transportation by clamp stackers and to increase stability, this being associated with relatively high material and manufacturing costs and requiring corresponding structural space.
There is therefore a demand for a floor-mounted household appliance with a treatment container with pull-out racks, which can be transported by a clamp stacker without damage and when freestanding is stable even when the center of gravity is displaced by pulling out the in particular loaded racks but can be manufactured with fewer parts compared with conventional floor-mounted household appliances with such characteristics, with the result that material and manufacturing costs can be saved.